Twenty20: England (129-5) beat Pakistan (126-4) by five wickets

Touch of genius: Eoin Morgan's ability to improvise has made him a key player for EnglandPhoto: REUTERS

By Derek Pringle

6:14PM BST 05 Sep 2010

England's first outing since becoming Twenty20 world champions ended in victory over Pakistan by five wickets at Cardiff on Sunday. Whether you have faith in the result really depends on whether you believe that the safest time to dine in a dodgy restaurant is the day after the health inspectors have been.

To win with 17 balls to spare is a comfortable victory in the end, Eoin Morgan and Michael Yardy overseeing the chase with an enterprising 67-run partnership after the early order had made a hash of the initial part of the chase.

Most batsmen approach Twenty20 with the macho intent to hit the ball as hard and as often as possible and hang the consequences. Morgan, and to a less-gifted extent, Yardy, opt for placement over power, their focus on getting the job done rather than catching the eye.

England bat much deeper than a 127-run target should necessitate, though that might have been tested more thoroughly had Pakistan caught their catches and better exploited a turning pitch on which England’s spinners had spun it feet earlier in the piece.

Pakistan are no slouches at this form of the game having beaten Australia twice this summer. Like England, they have been world champions last year and losing finalists before that, so they will be disappointed with their performance, especially their fielding, which was scarcely professional standard.

At 62 for five, it was a 50-50 game, especially as Saeed Ajmal had yet to bowl his off-spin on a surface turning square. But just when Pakistan might have put the squeeze on, a series of fielding errors and dropped catches allowed Morgan and Yardy to turn their shaky coalition into a winning one.

Shoaib Akhtar spilled Morgan when he was on 13, a simple catch at short third man after the batsman reverse-swept Shahid Afridi. To add insult to injury, Shoaib, now 35, had just been moved there having given away four runs off the skipper’s bowling while fielding on the long-off boundary.

Twenty20 is a young man’s game and with their squad down to its bare bones before the replacements arrive, Pakistan were forced to play the old guard. But while Shoaib failed to hide his age in the field, Mohammad Yousuf, 36, took a splendid running catch at mid-on to get rid of Ravi Bopara.

Yardy was also reprieved, on 11, Kamran Akmal missing a thick edge as the left-hander pushed at an Ajmal off-break. It isn’t the first time 'Calamitous Kamran’ has floored a chance, either this summer or during his career, but the ball did deviate enough this time for it to be considered a bonus had he managed to pouch it.

It is not the first time England have been without Kevin Pietersen in this format but it is only the second time they have won without him. He was there anyway, his image appearing on the sightscreens next to the slogan - “Every team needs pride”. England certainly looked like a team in possession of that quality when they fielded first, after Paul Collingwood won the toss. Yet well drilled as they are, catches were still spilled with Luke Wright’s simple drop at long-on and Stuart Broad’s near miraculous catch off his own bowling book-ending the difficulty spectrum.

Attacking the early Powerplay overs with gusto, Pakistan were well placed to make a decent score until Graeme Swann came into the attack in the seventh over. As appears to be his custom, he took a wicket in his first over while conceding just a single run.

Pakistan batsmen usually play spin well but they had few shots to counter the magnitude of Swann’s turn. Even the experienced Yousuf succumbed, caught at deep mid-wicket as he tried to hit Swann out of his groove. Shahzaib Hasan, stumped having a wild slog, succumbed to him soon after, but his real triumph was to finish with 14 dot balls from four overs – some going on a ground with such enticingly short straight boundaries. Yardy, not renowned as a big turner of the ball, spun it almost as much. According to locals, the pitch here has not gripped much all season, so this was unusual. Conditions that suit the bowlers are usually a good thing when the format allows enough time for batsmen to get used to them and build an innings, but not in a short game like Twenty20.

Having seen how the pitch had played definitely handed England an advantage in batting second. Not leaving too much to do against the spinners would have been the obvious approach, though with 10 runs coming off Ajmal’s first over, the 13th of the innings, it never became an issue.